Hey, nice going! Thanks for being interested in helping me raise money to fight blood cancers. If you clicked through from The Atlanta Banana, thanks for participating in a comedy experiment!

As most of you reading this know, my girlfriend, Lauraine Frank, fights cancer. If a ninja and a pirate had a baby, and that baby went back in time to train under Bruce Lee, science tells us that it would only be 1/7th as amazing at fighting as Lauraine is.

That's science, guys, and we don't argue with science.

Lauraine fights primarily by raising money that goes directly to cancer research and patients' families. She then sees direct benefit from these programs herself in her own fight against Hodgkin's lymphoma.

I was with Lauraine in the doctor's office when she got the news that she'd have to go through chemo again starting in the next few weeks. The first words out of her mouth were, "Oh, no! I'm going to have to quit my job!"

Not "Oh no! My treatment isn't working!"

Not "Oh damn, chemotherapy is gonna suck. Even worse than the Hawks!"

That's the kind of badass we're dealing with here.

So, what can we do? Well, I'm going to ride a bike 100 miles on June 3rd as part of Team In Training. Of course, riding a bicycle 100 miles is nothing compared with the work that Lauraine does and her coworkers do, but I hope that riding and talking about the ride can help motivate some folks to help me raise money.

This is research that saves lives. I've lost a number of family members to cancer in my life, such as my mother, and my grandmother before her. I'm sure anyone reading this has as well.

The good news is that we can save people who are still with us. Research moves quickly, and every day discoveries are made, all thanks to the generosity of people like you.

So, thanks for taking a look, and dig deep. It's a big deal.

-Jim Hodgson

2/25/2012